Quotes About Ancestry

Why was it I sometimes felt as weary of America as if I too had landed in what was now South Carolina in 1526 or in Jamestown in 1619? Was it the tug of all the lost mothers and orphaned children? Or was it that each generation felt anew the yoke of a damaged life and the distress of being a native stranger, an eternal alien?

I'm not certain, but I have a little gypsy blood in me. And my mother always told me that her grandma could give someone the evil eye, and I'd better not cross her because she had some of that blood in her. Mother always believed that she could predict the future, and she had dreams that came true.

So if Adam and Eve are the parents of the whole human race, where did Cain's wife come from? After

And so there is no God but has been in the loins of past gods.

It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.

People define themselves in terms of ancestry, religion, language, history, values, customs, and institutions. They identify with cultural groups: tribes, ethnic groups, religious communities, nations, and, at the broadest level, civilizations. People use politics not just to advance their interests but also to define their identity. We know who we are only when we know who we are not and often only when we know whom we are against.

Ancestral voices prophesying war!

the Breauxs, and she was, after all,

Is where you're from the place you're leaving or where you have roots?

The good thing about the aristocracy – German or English – was that they were easily traced, Mirabelle thought.

None of them were recent, but that was the nature of family stories. They had to be far enough in the past that they took on a mythic quality.

Each time we plant a seed, we become ancestors for the generations to come.

They, who passed away long ago, still exist in us, as predisposition, as burden upon our fate, as murmuring blood, and as gesture that rises up from the depths of time.

Oh, I know my family's not of royal blood, but you needn't throw it in my face all the time.

I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time.

I was trying to find out who my father was. They say that at that time, that if you are illegitimate, the father doesn't have to put his name down on the certificate.

Yes, but I - you know, it's been such a long time, I'm sure that I've got cousins and uncles that I've never met before, you know, that I've left behind.

I am the family face; flesh perishes, I live on, projecting trait and trace through time to times anon, and leaping from place to place over oblivion.

Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that I'd much rather be disliked for being me than to be disliked just because I'm a kender. I can do something about me, you see, but I can't do much about being a kender because my mother was a kender and so was my father and that seems to have a lot to do with me being a kender.

All lives are stories, and history is made of stories.

Lagrange was born in Turin (now Italy), but his family was partly French ancestry on his father's side, who was originally wealthy, managed to squander all the family's fortune in speculations, leaving his son with no inheritance. Later in life, Lagrange described this economic catastrophe as the best thing that had ever happened to him: Had I inherited a fortune I would probably not have cast my lot with mathematics.

Romans often took family names from agriculture, Cato

It's always good to remember where you come from and celebrate it. To remember where you come from is part of where you're going

Blood, indeed! If my father had been a baker, I should know by this time where to look for my livelihood. As it is, I am told of nothing but my blood. Will my blood ever get me half a crown?